Best New Yorker Articles of 1998

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about pro-life U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who supports a ban on partial-birth abortions. On the evening of September 26, 1996, …

Andrew Solomon on his struggle with depression.

Joan Acocella’s Profile of the dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who, after defecting from the Soviet Union, became one of the most famous names in ballet in the twentieth century.

Paul Berman on the author, from 1998: “His ear could locate the underground noises of moles and ants. His eyesight could zoom in, binocularlike, on the farthest distances.”

Nicky Drew on the origins of “ramspecking” and “burrowing in.”

Years after Argentina's dirty war, a secret resurfaces.

Hilton Als on the private and public lives of the author of “The Fire Next Time” and “Giovanni’s Room.”

PROFILE of David Geffen. Entertainment moguls usually come from the film business, sometimes from TV, almost never from the record industry: never before …

Signed Comment about the amusement value, civil rights implications, and potential financial repercussions from the Giuliani administration’s new …

What happened behind the scenes of Theodore Kaczynski’s abrupt, unsatisfying, and badly understood decision to plead guilty?

Signed comment about Rupert Murdoch's cancellation of a book by Christopher Patten on Hong Kong... A few weeks ago, Murdoch temporarily departed from …

Hilton Als’s 1998 Profile of the performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery, whose personal aesthetic was his form of rebellion—his massive body both his weapon and his shield.

A REPORTER AT LARGE about multiple-personality disorder. The writer describes the case of Elizabeth Carlson, who, in the late 1980s and early '90s, …

Tad Friend on Garry Shandling, of “The Larry Sanders Show,” and the dangers of mixing business with friendship.

Fiction, from 1998: He wondered what Shoba would tell him in the dark. The worst possibilities had already run through his head.

Anthony Lane explores the history and future of Lego, visits a Lego lab in Billund Sweden—and visits with Norman Mailer, who has built a giant Lego city in his living room.

Philip Gourevitch’s 1998 report on the fax sent from Rwanda to U.N. headquarters, warning of impending genocide.

Richard Rayner profiles Redford, the epitome of the American movie star, and discusses the making of “The Horse Whisperer,“ “All the President's Men,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and “The Way We Were,” as well as the origins of the Sundance Film Festival.

PROFILE of film director Terry Gilliam. Director Terry Gilliam is in the final stages of editing his new film, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which is …

Henry Louis Gates on how a basketball star became the greatest corporate pitchman of all time.

Daphne Merkin on Courtney Love, the leader of the band Hole, the widow of Kurt Cobain, the star of “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and the subject of Nick Broomfield’s documentary “Kurt & Courtney.”

The unnamed, genderless narrator lives in a futuristic, sleep-deprived world where sleeping is considered dirty, unhygienic, wasteful, and disrespectful to…

Signed comment about summer. The American ideal of summer is unreal. The truth is that summer is a muggy climate and an overworked population. And, …

A REPORTER AT LARGE about Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, 43... Tells about a recent visit by Summers to Japan, where he was greeted as if he …

During a typhoon, a father and his young son, who suffers from seizures, think about death and dreaming, in this short story from 1998.

LETTER FROM LANCASTER COUNTY about Amish drug dealers. On July 2nd, two Amishmen from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Abner Stolzfus and Abner King …

LETTER FROM LIBERIA about President Charles Taylor... Liberia has always been a harsh place, but for most of this century it was one of the most stable …

From 1998: Cynthia Ozick on life after graduate school, lunch breaks in Bryant Park, and avoiding a future in accounting.

THE POLITICAL SCENE about Kenneth Starr's effort to prove that President Bill Clinton perjured himself when he denied having an affair with White House…

annals of finance about the stock market, parallels with 1929 in global economic conditions, and the Federal Reserve Board's chairman, Alan …

Adam Gopnik recalls his years in Freudian psychoanalysis.

Mark Singer’s 1998 Profile of the immensely popular and prolific novelist Stephen King, whose horrors seduce us with scenes and places that are reassuringly familiar.

ANNALS OF LAW about Washington's nascent impeachment drama. The writer describes the newly renovated suite H2-186, in the Gerald R. Ford House Office …

Mrs. Brown meets Mrs. Dalloway in Southern California, in this short story from 1998.

Adam Gopnik on the literary structure of Kenneth Starr’s report on President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Anthony Lane on the photographer who awakened America to modernism.

How Cassius Clay became the most original and magnetic athlete of the twentieth century.

Jon Lee Anderson profiles the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a former general who led the country for seventeen repressive years after a U.S.-backed coup.

Adam Gopnik on the Berkeley ideals that the American chef brings to Paris: the belief that it’s possible—even imperative—to do good by eating well.

Joan Didion on the words he wrote—and didn’t.

Her photographs urged us to make public art out of formerly private, off-limits experience, Peter Schjeldahl writes.

ANNALS OF HOLLYWOOD about movie director Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi's cheesy 1979 horror film, "The Evil Dead," which boasts an absurd plot, bad acting, and…

Fiction, from 1998: “Ottaline had seen most of what there was to see around her with nothing new in sight.”

Short story about a woman in her mid-forties who is a vegeterian and her visit to a neighbor’s house on Christmas Day.

Profile of comedian and actor Bob Hope.

Short story about a family on a ski holiday... Faith goes with her family on a Christmas ski vacation while her sister is in rehab, and her sister’s …